


On Transcendentalism, Civil Disobedience, and None of Those Aforementioned Things At All

by davefoley



Series: a very brief saga [2]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davefoley/pseuds/davefoley
Summary: Or, what appears to be a conceited effort to bring David Henry Thoreau back into the public consciousness
Relationships: Illya Kuryakin/Napoleon Solo
Series: a very brief saga [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610497
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	On Transcendentalism, Civil Disobedience, and None of Those Aforementioned Things At All

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so i had to repost with some rewrites and stuff because the moment after i posted it last night i was just extremely, extremely upset with how it turned out LOL. i hope this one reads better and a lot of mistakes have been removed, all due in part with my never editing before i post and whatnot. haven't read thoreau personally just thought it'd be funny to incorporate. warning for the q-slur in one small passage

He didn’t want to talk about it, and Illya thought, well that’s just fine. That’s just fucking fine.

But it’s been about a month going on an extra several weeks, and after botching the last affair on account of some stick up his ass about old things, things they had talked about before, had been settled, clean cut and dry, it was clear some action was imparted on Illya to snap Napoleon out of it.

If Napoleon didn’t want to have something more to their relationship, the least he could do was to tell him. But for all his not telling Illya that he doesn’t, that means there’s a “yes” waiting to be coerced out.

This is Kuryakin’s last stand.

—

Illya walks up to Napoleon’s door with a bottle of vodka and some pierogis he bought from the Ukrainian deli and feels entirely foreign in his own apartment building.

It was just the curious quality of the eighth floor where Napoleon’s apartment was. He knew that his apartment four floors down was of the same exact production and aesthetic cohesion but he supposed that something about it symbolized what was the imaginary threshold between him and Napoleon and the difference between waking up in his own bed to waking up in Napoleon’s. He’s just so in reach yet not quite — and Illya thought he was the one who was supposed to deal in contrasts, dealt in being who he was above all else.

Napoleon opens the door after two rings of the doorbell and welcomes Illya into his home with his typical amiable charm and vain gesticulation. The both of them were bachelors and it showed. And where Illya’s apartment held a sparse and functional purpose, renovated moderately in a way to exude a blunt modesty, with a bed and a drawer and a table or two, Napoleon’s apartment was dense with the fixings of a self-made man in the shallowest way. A worldly globe that sat on oak lion legs, a stuffed bookcase and decidedly “masculine” furniture, like anchors on the walls and an elegant bronze cast of some bird in flight. They were both decorated to represent men who kept to themselves.

He had invited Illya over for work — after Waverly admonished the two of them for the failure, Napoleon wanted to take a more proactive angle for the new affair. It was about going over protocol and discussing facets of the situation and what kind of strategies can be employed to complete the affair with flying colours. This over some scotch and vodka and food, with their shoes kicked off and their ties loosened all in basic good bachelor fashion — the irony felt heady. The air did too.

“With what I was able to gather at the Research department, I would fashion a guess that while Dr. Egret isn’t the head of this operation, she’s definitely involved,” Napoleon says, filing through some documents he’s got haphazardly splayed on his ornate coffee table.

“And we don’t have concrete proof yet but there are rumours her current alias is by the name of Georgina Culler,” He leans over, takes a sip of his scotch, and Illya notices him cursing himself silently for having no coasters at hand, but also how he stuffy he looks with his shirt still buttoned all the way up. “You might have heard of her from one of those summits you enjoy so much, she’s been making waves in the organic chemistry field.”

“I have,” Illya dryly responds after swallowing down a pierogi he had in his hands and grabs the offered document Napoleon hands to him with slightly dirty fingers and thinks nothing of it. “She claims she’s created a new formula to reduce physical growth of the body — she says she hopes the success of it can kill tumors or at least make them considerably easier to remove, even going so far as to say it could perhaps ‘shrink’ cancer down on such a microscopic level it practically goes inert in the body.” Illya looks up and notices that Napoleon has two buttons unbuttoned, and about seven more to go.

Napoleon hums his response back. He plays with his fountain pen, an obviously expensive purchase, between his teeth and rests aside his papers to stand up and stretch. All things Illya watches with intent behind his back, the way Napoleon’s hips cock and the way he tries to stretch each limb as he paces around.

“Curing cancer,” Napoleon muttered, and stops in front of his bookcase. It was predominantly full of poetry and philosophy and essays. Napoleon’s read them all cover to back and vice versa. Recently however, he’s kept his reading habits to the GQ at dentist offices, trite paperbacks he’s bought to hide his face behind, and as complete as the complete works of Shakespeare can get.

Illya clears his throat to try to bring Napoleon’s waning attention back. “She’s operating mostly around the west side of the country, like in Oregon and California.” He shuffles through some more papers while Napoleon sees it fit to wander off, when _he_ was the one who wanted to do some pre-mission prep. “Last recording of her appearance appears to be somewhere in Washington state.”

Napoleon remembers in a cloudy manner that he was halfway through Thoreau — and then thought about how good a weekend in the mountains all by himself would feel.

“Napoleon,” Illya’s irritated call for his name breaks a curiously blissful silence. “Napoleon?”

Napoleon clears his throat to remind Illya that he's still listening. “Hm, yes well, while I admire Dr. Culler’s altruism, I’d like to think there’s a lot more a person can do with a formula that can biologically shrink organic matter to an imperceptible manner — to put it as generally as possible.” He turns around and catches Illya’s stare and holds it for a small amount of seconds, before he looks down and continues pacing. Secretaries at UNCLE, they chat — they say Illya’s eyes are icy cold and that he could kill you with one stare. Well, Napoleon thinks, they’re about half right. It was never frigidity he saw in his stare. It’s an excessive warmth. It melts you.

It frightens him.

—

Illya decides to have another glass of vodka but looks at the vodka and thinks, how ridiculous it’d be to carve the inroad to the dreaded elephant with only half his wits with him.

The night was all but covered and all that could be said about the affair could only be said at the bridge when they cross it. Napoleon started to putter around cleaning up detritus while he handled the documents, hopefully not in worse wear being scattered around and mishandled with unclean hands. Napoleon’s fastidiousness rivaled Illya’s — perhaps it had to do with their reserved characters, for as much as Napoleon charmed his way into bedrooms and parties in his off-time, in the greater off-time he kept to himself to do... whatever Napoleon did.

Illya decides to not fiddle with the empty glass anymore and hands it to Napoleon, who was more or less waiting for him to rescind it to him for cleaning.

“Drinking half a bottle of straight vodka and you don’t even feel a thing?” Napoleon says, admiring the leftovers of the bottle he’ll correctly keep cool in the freezer, with a playful but otherwise tired tone. “I do wonder how they party in Siberia and Novgorod, Saint Petersburg and Minsk.”

“The same as they do in New Jersey,” Illya comments. “Aggressively and communally.”

Napoleon smiles amusingly at that. Illya follows him to the kitchen and takes his place across the counter while Napoleon assembles the dirty dishes before he even begins to clean them, seeming to stretch out moments to merely decide what he wants to do step by step. It’s behaviour not fit for UNCLE field agents, who have to think at a quarter of a dime’s drop for solutions that get the job done at the cost of anything else, and it endears him.

“Napoleon,” Illya says, slowly, after moments of his own deliberation. Napoleon shut off the sink, having filled it with soapy water, and hadn’t yet gotten dirty. He was only just getting to his sleeves, to roll them up, and there are still two buttons unbuttoned on his shirt. “Napoleon I think there’s something we need to talk about.”

“If it’s about what happened last affair,” Napoleon caught onto things fast. He takes off from the counter, almost not knowing whether to stay or to go. “I don’t want to hear it. We need not dwell any longer on past mistakes.”

“Says you,” Illya jabs, thinking about the Terbuf Affair and old flames flickering close. “But even before that.” Illya now quickly follows after him as he figures to leave the kitchen with brisk strides. And he stops in the middle of the living room as Illya finishes his sentence. “What happened in March.” Napoleon slows down, relents, and takes a seat on the couch.

Illya makes no movements yet to join him. “Something happened then and I don’t think we can ignore it forever,” he says. “It goes beyond our performance in the last mission. It’s going to destroy our partnership if we don’t do something.”

“I think our partnership has remained about the same,” Napoleon tersely replies. He almost does it — makes the move to unbutton more of his shirt to feel looser, less bound. An almost insulting way to head into conversation with a topic like this one. “I had the Research department create a critical assessment of our mission going off of our reports as well as supplementary reading on the situation and the external circumstances...”

Feeling trapped, Napoleon feigns comfort and crosses his legs. “And there were a great deal of external circumstances that we couldn’t account for.”

“You’re not wrong that our odds were stacked against us,” Illya admits and it was true, It wasn’t a completely inaccurate assessment — the affair happened to have intermingled perfectly with the theatrics of a couple going on the brink of divorce, who seemed to appear during the most seminal times of their attempts to foil THRUSH and inevitably foiled them in the process. “But I’m not talking about the external circumstances.” Illya says, taking a seat next to Napoleon, who flinches but makes no internal comment on it.

“I’m talking about why you didn’t want to be near me,” Illya continues, looking for the subtle tells in Napoleon’s face to lead him through the darkness. “Why things we were completely comfortable with doing with one another felt like a life or death situation.” The wife, a lovely and mousy woman, roped Napoleon into playing marriage counselor and Napoleon all but balked, while the husband, a stately but off-putting man, haggled Illya for “prices” on the pretense that he was a foreign assassin.

Napoleon scowls. “Christ Illya, just because I didn’t feel like sharing the bed with you doesn’t mean our entire relationship is in jeopardy.” He vividly remembers that moment, because it happened after it looked like Illya was coming closer with that lithe warm body of his to kiss him when the doors were closed and the night was young and Napoleon wasn’t prepared and he felt _lost at sea._ Illya nearly goes in for a rebuttal but bites it back in the end.

Right around the grand procession of the mission, the husband was caught in the crossfire of THRUSH and UNCLE butting heads and the death of an innocent presented heavy consequences on the both of them. Napoleon had escaped with his share of scrapes and Illya made it away relatively unscathed. The wife, having realized she lost her husband, moved on and was found in the aftermath flirting with the cocktail waiter who had been extraordinarily compassionate to her throughout the ordeal.

The man shouldn’t have died, Illya thought. He was innocent by default — a regular businessman caught in the face of something bigger than all of them, and had a handsome face and good eyes to boot. But the woman shouldn’t die or suffer in his place — she too was innocent, with a good heart, and had words that spoke of experience. Napoleon had put it succinctly that day: “They were good people apart and bad people together,” he said, as UNCLE’s clean-up personnel began to shuffle in. “Some people were meant for other things than being with each other.”

Illya thought about what they must have known separately and concluded the same.

“And besides,” Napoleon says, thinking about the way the husband had died pushing his wife away from the shots. How he ended up with more injuries than he should have, taking the man’s body behind a table to be at peace with him for mere seconds in lieu of Illya escorting the wife away to safety. “Didn’t we used to complain about that, how unfitting of an international organization is to shack its agents up in a single bedroom when they could easily pull double beds?” And, while Napoleon formulated a plan, that man had said in his dying moments, “We did love each other,”—a cough of blood on his gaudy tie, possibly a gift from her—“for a time.” before going limp.

“That was seven years ago,” Illya answers, “our early days.” He says it evenly but the thought is stark — it’s been eight whole years with this flagrant yet secretive American. Eight years of action and tension, twitchy biting banter and silent camaraderie — they had practically been attached at the hip the moment Illya had graduated Survival School, on Waverly’s recommendation that he be “paired with the finest”, like the “finest” had been waiting for his perfect match. The word “finest” inevitably bore more than one meaning as time went on.

Third base was that rich March evening when somehow it all happened, where Napoleon couldn’t stand to look at him once, while Illya let his eyes eat up every detail and image. But they were both panting and involved — moving until Napoleon stopped and personified the look of the little death, and Illya bit back his “I love you” one more time out of too many. Eight years. That couple from the mission had only been together for three.

“I don’t think dwelling that far in the past to deflect the situation at hand is advisable,” Illya says offhandedly, going centimeters closer, approaching Napoleon like he would a bomb or a skittish field animal. Though Napoleon the fox was a great deal more amiable than this Napoleon right now. “And it wasn’t just sharing a bed, it was refusing to be alone with me behind closed doors any longer than you needed to be.”

“I was stressed from the mission and trying to busy myself.” Napoleon says it like a lie, and in context it’s quite true — saying things with some of the reasons omitted casually is enough to do that. “What counts as the past to you, isn’t a month alone in a life that goes as fast as she does pushing it?”

“This month,” Illya says, “felt like the beginning of those eight years all over again.”

Napoleon is silent. He begs his body to leave the couch and escort Illya out of his apartment but instead he remains there, arms crossed and looking straight ahead at that bronze bird. It’s a seagull — a rather contemptible bird, but one that spoke of shameless liberty and the feeling of the air and the sea and the land all beneath you. He received it from his Aunt Amy for Christmas four years ago, the first Christmas he invited Illya over to celebrate with him.

Illya had given him a bouquet of purple and blue hydrangeas, as bright and as vivid as his eyes, and said, “These reminded me of you in many ways, and plus they say it is the traditional anniversary gift for the fourth year,” he added jokingly. Napoleon, who dealt in party humor and more taboo than one could admit at the time, laughed and accepted them.

He had them prim and proper in an exquisite vase he had picked up in Hong Kong and hoped to care for them so they could live as long a life as they could. Naturally, as soon as the festivities were over they were shanghaied into a mission that lasted weeks — Napoleon came back and they were dead. So he took a page from Mira, one of the cryptographers from Communications, and pressed their dead bodies between books to preserve them. He’s forgotten which books they were in.

“Well?” Illya is closer to him than he remembered, and when Illya’s breath catches on his ear, all tension rackets in his body and makes him feel very, very weak.

“I don’t know what to say Illya,” Napoleon confesses, refusing to look Illya’s way. “It’s not that it wasn’t new — it was just terrifying all the same.”

“Exactly how long ago has it been since you were with a man?” Illya has large hands, Napoleon notes. Broad and calloused, like blunt objects — feeling one on his shoulder, he felt threatened by the compassion just as much as the strength that was coiled in there.

“Last time was maybe a week ago, not long at all—“ but Napoleon won’t mention that the man was blond and blue eyed, had a touch of English accent, slim, and that he picked him up at one of _those_ bars in a pique of sheer need. “We ended it quite comfortably as I recall.” His name was Nathan and he was saving up for an apartment with his girlfriend, vehemently denying that he was a queer but that the money’s good, so he took it like any other job, and he was inexplicably damn good at it. Napoleon gave him thrice the amount out of disdain, or of pity, and even gave him his business card if he needed more help. Nathan thanked him and when he thought Napoleon was out of earshot, said "What a sucker," and locked the door. And the queer who didn’t know better (who was the real queer here?) lived to see another day.

“Then,” Illya asks, “is it my fault? Did I do something to scare you off—“

“Just being yourself,” Napoleon finally admits, and that’s about as bald faced as the confession could be, “Just you being here, right now.”

This is the silence that stretched like skin on a rack.

Napoleon spares a glance towards Illya, for once, and he’s cowed in those blue eyes that spoke of utter understanding.

Illya doesn’t make any rash movements, but he does caress Napoleon’s jawline with his lips with the barest touches, and feels shamelessly addicted to the soft trembling that’s started to thrum under his skin. After making his way to Napoleon’s chin and then to the shell of his ear, to nip it with all the intention to subdue, Illya speaks.

“Napoleon,” his voice takes on an unmistakable breathlessness, “I can’t change the way I am, and you know that. Perhaps in the most intimate way you know that.”

“The ways I know are part of what keep me up at night,” Napoleon says between slow sighs, that with enough ministrations from Illya’s lips will descend into outright panting and then to desperate gulps of air— “We know each other far too well.”

Illya scoffs lightly. “On the contrary,” he says, while breaking apart from Napoleon’s body completely, leaving Napoleon on that threshold on purpose, of just being so close yet yards apart. “Your mystery precedes you, and your mask making goes so far as to hide me even now from the various truths of your person.”

“You’re what came out of the other side of the looking glass, _tovarisch,_ ” and Napoleon resists his body’s demands for more of the man next to him, “If the looking glass somehow formed on the imaginary border that deemed the west the West and the east the East.”

“You looked my way and saw the opposite.”

“I looked at you and saw everything I wasn’t but needed all along.”

“I was the missing part of the whole,” Illya only takes a moment to put together the rest, with well enough context from the gradual yielding of his partner, the faint red of his cheeks... “And you’ve never felt that way before. You were so used to building your own subpar halves.”

“Building, finding,” Napoleon felt cold and he wonders if a window needed to be shut. “Fucking. Wanting to love.”

It was much like chipping open the rock surrounding a magnificent fossil, Illya thought, where eventually enough of the hard stuff was over with, crumbled, and all that remained was the dust you brushed off to preserve the fossil in all its natural imperfections. All to covet later, Illya notes, all to covet and claim as your own discovery.

He finally brings his hand back to Napoleon’s shoulder and the muscles aren’t quite as tense, instead there is a lukewarm reticence that suggests the continuing success of his coercion. “Then let me be myself, obstinate and bullheaded as I am,” Illya says huskily, noticing that Napoleon almost made the movement to object, perhaps to Illya’s self deprecation, or to the confession. “Let me put all my cards on the table so you can sort them out on your own.”

“I want to move in and live with you in your apartment, because being four floors apart where you’re quite accessible yet not quite is tedious,” Illya says, grabbing Napoleon’s hand and caressing it in between his own, coaxing the anxiety out. “and I choose your apartment primarily because you would have issue with living in mine.” Napoleon nods at that, imperceptibly.

“I want to sleep in the same bed as you, on the king sized mattress with your decadent Egyptian silk sheets and extravagant goose down pillows. Every night whenever possible. I like your warmth and how solid you feel against me.” Napoleon lets out the faintest of chuckles while Illya sidles up closer and closer.

“When morning comes, I’ll force you out of bed so you can make the both of us breakfast, because you make an amazing omelet, you know exactly what I like in mines because I’ve practically drilled it in your head how I like it, from the nights and mornings we’ve shared before because leaving felt too bothersome,” Illya adds under his breath, hopefully unheard, “but I respectfully slept on the couch or in the armchair, while you locked the bedroom door behind you,”

I’ll walk out in a bathrobe you insist I wear around the apartment if I don’t wear anything else but my boxers as a social grace, and you’re already cleaning up the mess you made while I eat and reprimand you for not brewing the tea strong enough in place of telling you how delicious the omelet is,”

Illya unbuttons three buttons off of Napoleon’s shirt before slithering his hand underneath to map across his shoulder, letting the shirt peel off enough to leave a tantalizing tease of Napoleon’s full chest. Napoleon’s breath quickens again. “And I’ll be thinking,” Illya continues, voice now dark with want, “of the way you’re walking around the kitchen with a mild limp, and how gingerly you take your seat across from me at the table, because last night I all but buried you into the mattress, with how hard I fucked you last night.”

Napoleon’s eyes slip shut.

“And I want that almost everyday of my life, with you Napoleon.” Illya wants to take the way Napoleon’s breath comes out ragged and torn as he finally slips his shirt off and drink it.

“That night in March—“ Napoleon flinches with a gasp when Illya’s hand deftly slip under his trousers to tease his erection, ridiculously hard just from the mere thought of what could be happening, according to Illya, almost everyday. With presumed leeway for the external circumstances.

“We’ll never have that ever again,” Illya groans against his jugular when Napoleon starts to arch and press his body against him to feel as much of that body he’s long ached for, rolling his hips towards Illya’s slack grip which rubs the foreskin over and under his sensitive head. “We’ll have something better,”

“Illya—“

“Tell me what you want now Napoleon, now that I’ve given you my entire hand, but the truth is,” And Illya grabs the hand Napoleon was using to grip the back of the couch to let him feel his own heavy erection, eliciting a downright wanton sob from Napoleon— “You don’t have a lot of time to decide before I can’t help myself.”

“Fuck me Illya,” Napoleon cries out, after having pulled his trousers down far enough to part his thighs slightly for Illya to tease two fingers on the area behind his balls, just enough to make Napoleon want to _scream_ for it. “Fuck me right now—“ Illya’s lips eclipse his own and Napoleon feels like he’s being submerged of his own free will, going deeper and deeper into the darkest parts of the sea where your only senses are touch and sound and _taste._

“Bedroom,” Illya growls, done with the foreplay and done with awkwardly making out with Napoleon from the side without straddling him, “we’ll move to the bedroom,”

“Bedroom,” Napoleon repeats, panting, wanting to go but it’s Illya who won’t stop massaging his inner thigh— “Yes, let’s— to the bedroom—“

Illya’s head is so foggy with desire he might as well said bedroom a fourth time, instead dragging Napoleon up with him and helping him get his pants off—almost tearing them off much to Napoleon’s chagrin—and pushing that sleek and solid body down the hall with intent to lock the door behind them.

—

“That man you mentioned last week,” Illya and Napoleon are now on the king sized mattress Illya spoke very fondly of, taking off bits and pieces of his clothes until all that was left was pure skin. “Did he—?“

“He did fuck me,” Napoleon, who’s sitting cross legged in the middle of the bed freshly (and hastily) showered and toweling off, conjures the moment and realizes ridiculously that Nathan didn’t look much like Illya at all; he had ruddy cheeks and a large nose and a big rib cage, “The stuff’s in the bottom drawer,” he answers Illya’s next question and Illya bends over to offer a sensuous view of his unmarred back to Napoleon while he grabs it.

At the sight of his back, Napoleon stifles a sound halfway between amusement and incredulity — Nathan had a large birthmark that started from his chest and spread as far as his lower back. And it was shaped like Italy.

Illya crawls back and shoves Napoleon down into the mattress, causing him to gasp and flounder momentarily. He loosens his grip, but otherwise firmly keeps him by the shoulders.

“I want to make one thing clear Napoleon,” Illya speaks to him on the edge of a threat while Napoleon doesn’t hide the way he stares at his cock, red and weeping and hard. “I didn’t ask if he fucked you because I wanted to know if I needed to be careful, I asked because I wanted to know how hard I could fuck you before you would break under me,”

"And to erase every trace of any man who’s been with you, to make space for me and me alone." is what's left unsaid, but the implication was spoken in the air anyhow — that soft and breathy moan from Napoleon’s parted lips was unmistakable. And he trembles. Struggling not to come right there and then.

“Now if you could just spread those legs for me...” Illya murmurs while doing the deed himself, hands clammy from the sheer want. Napoleon is wildly flexible — Illya could spread and push up those lean and smooth legs until his knees are digging into his sides and it’s practically natural. He scooches down until he’s meeting face to face with Napoleon’s erection and as a considerate afterthought, grabs one of his countless pillows to insert under his hips.

With Napoleon’s hips supported, Illya takes Napoleon’s cock in his hand and takes his time enveloping the organ with his lips. Napoleon feels the world white out just for a second. “Illya—“ he gasps out, debating if he should get his fingers into the shaggy hair of his paramour or clutching at the headboard for dear life.

There wasn’t enough time to decide in the end as Illya took Napoleon’s cock to the hilt and convulsed his throat — something purposeful rather than a mistake of the fickle gag reflex — and Napoleon almost tore at the sheets with his grip. Illya gets away with a devilish smile, it was much like that cheeky grin that ‘Filthy’ persona of his wore as a form of character change, but now comes off like the casual reveal of a part of him that Napoleon saw for the first time then, with no doubt he was hiding it in plain sight. Then he takes his mouth off completely to move lower and lower until...

He very gently tongues Napoleon’s opening and is nearly bucked off the bed for his audacity.

Heady with the smell of sweat and skin and soap, Illya caresses the curvature of Napoleon’s ass right next to where his tongue continues to prod and tease, down from where the sheets meet all the way up to the back of Napoleon’s oddly ticklish knees. All in alleviating the tension from Napoleon’s body so that eventually he relaxes, so that Illya can feel enough leeway to press in a little and so he can get terribly terribly aroused by the heat and the _tightness_ of his partner’s body.

Napoleon is panting like mad and rolling his entire body up to the ministrations of Illya’s tongue, long and adept at its job. He finds purchase in even the most minuscule successive movements where the muscle goes in _just a little deeper,_ just enough to stretch it. Enough that Illya can rescind his tongue and then push it back in, leaving Napoleon awash in sensations that form a tight coil of addictive heat in his lower belly, something he holds like he holds the pillow under him, like a savage creature comfort.

Illya suppresses a nervous tremor as he feels Napoleon open up before him, and then again when he removes his mouth from Napoleon and with warmed and lubricated fingers, plunges in with the third knuckle in an inexorable pace. With a white knuckled grip on his left hip, Illya holds Napoleon down and feverishly fingers him, not caring how progressively sloppy he gets, rotating and hooking and dragging and scissoring his digits to find purchase in the soft wet heat.

He watches with abandon all the ways Napoleon’s body is just so responsive: from the violent twitches that come and go as they please, to his thighs that tremble and want to clamp down on Illya’s head the way his hips _roll_ and takes what it can get and more, how his face alternates between being tight with need or lax with pleasure. And to that brilliant sheen of sweat all over his body because he’s so fucking _hot_ and he can’t stand waiting any longer.

“Illya, now—”

“What did you think I was just getting to,” Illya hisses out, pulling his fingers from the heat and finding the situation of him looking a little longingly at his ever so welcoming destination obscene. He lubes himself up with careful strokes, hoping to not go off before the big moment and salutes the silk sheets for accepting the mess he wipes off on them before clutching at Napoleon’s leg with one hand and holding his erection at his hole with the other.

“You know there was a moment that night,” Illya murmurs, all cloudy like, while he thinks it appropriate to tease Napoleon again with the head of his cock, nudging and rubbing against him just to make him arch his back and toss his head back into the pillows, creating a scorching visual. “Where I almost wanted to do this. Fuck you on my couch.”

“You should have just did it,” Napoleon exasperatingly moans, finding himself unable to keep his mouth shut and _g-d_ he wants to, to wipe the smugness off his partner's face, “I wouldn’t have resisted as long. Enough with the talk already, you conniving Russian—”

Illya smiles, concedes to Napoleon’s plight with the same amount of want, and presses in.

—

“We shouldn’t have done that the night before such a long meeting.”

“You’re only upset because you have to clean up as soon as you get back.”

Napoleon grumbles and obsequiously points at his lower back, “She begs to differ,” and then noticing that they’ve almost made it to the door of their destination, prepares himself for another long period of sitting again. “At least the chairs are better in Waverly’s office.”

Illya eyes Napoleon with a bemused expression. “Oh, but wouldn’t it be fantastic if Waverly’s called us in to inform us that events in our upcoming affair have quickened and we must abscond to Missouri at post haste?”

“THRUSH would have too much to speak for,” Napoleon mutters. “Missouri, Miskatonic... Massachusetts, maudlin...” a bouncy new intern with beautiful red curls floats by and Napoleon gives her a playfully leering look and as she floats farther away, tittering and like a bauble, he returns to a habit of simple word association. Recently he's been reading the dictionary and thesaurus — they're remarkably terrific ways of wasting many hours. Illya makes fun of him for it incessantly, according to his rather sensationalist interpretations of what Napoleon does when he doesn't feel like romance.

“Misery,” Illya chimes in. “Misery’s a good word for your circumstances."

“Miffed,” is all Napoleon says, brightening as he remembers what had happened earlier this morning. “That reminds me, I finally found those hydrangeas you gave me on Christmas,”

“The hydrangeas I gave you on...?” Illya squints in confusion, and then his eyes widen. “Napoleon, that was eight years ago, they should long be dead by now!”

“Ah, but they aren’t!” Taking pleasure in catching Illya by surprise, they’ve sat down in the more conversational sitting area of the office to wait for Waverly’s appearance. “I was keeping them pressed in the essays section of my library, on different pages of Thoreau.”

“You always did say you wanted to get back into Thoreau,” Illya affirms, honest to g-d contemplating a small drink at ten in the morning like he’s in his twenties all over again. He’s been holding back these past couple of years on the health advice of Napoleon, who insists so on his new philosophy on, yes, asceticism. “On Sunday we should go through your collection, I believe most of them are holding dust now instead of words.”

“Unfortunately you might be right there,” Facetiously slumping into his chair, Napoleon also contemplates a morning scotch. His new creed on asceticism (from purely alcohol) has more or less felt like the new year’s resolution that bites back. But as long as Illya keeps himself in check, he couldn’t afford to tarry himself. “We might just have to give up everything but the—”

“The Thoreaus, because you want to finish them.”

“Yes,” Napoleon responds. He seems to then remembers the hydrangeas again and looks at Illya, fondly until it drives a spike of mild annoyance in his face. “The flowers by the way, were in “Paradise (to be) Regained”.” And Napoleon, upon finding them, claimed he could still smell their sweet but complex scent. It would be Illya to tell him that he knew he pressed them when they were dead and that their smell was either nonexistent or repugnant, and for him to retort and say with a wry expression, “Perhaps not the scent that’s become permeated then, rather the intentions.”

Illya wonders where Waverly is but remembers that Waverly's getting _quite_ old. He’s possibly on his third recommendation to the man to finally retire, but then again, him and Napoleon were getting quite close to their sudden retirement from the field as well. Which brings him to those flowers again. “How convenient that you found them,” he says, the barest look of giddiness crossing his face at the coincidence. “It’s the fourth year since we’ve made it all official.”

Napoleon grins back. “And so you could say that...”

“That paradise has yet to be within reach,” Waverly says dryly, finally making his entrance — he undoubtedly still has a spryness to him, but it’s only growing milder by the day. “The two of you must make an immediate trip to Missouri; THRUSH has not only apprehended the mechanical tornado blueprints but have taken over the facility completely! They have all the resources necessary to complete the construction of it, the stakes are too high to dilly dally about, go now!”

“Are—”

“Kuryakin, must you ask stupid questions? Of course all accommodations have been handled! And,” Waverly takes out his humidor and places it on the desk as if bestowing its own finely aged presence onto the two agents. He then takes out his pipe and smiles knowingly. “After some deliberation with the Finance department, we have finally secured you two...”

Napoleon and Illya, who have stood up with the immediacy of the situation and have been collecting their papers and weapons with practiced speed, stood dumbfounded in anticipation.

“...With?” Napoleon asks, bravely risking the stupid question again like a captain does, who sacrifices himself for the crew—

“With a room with two beds.” Waverly finishes. A beautiful and pleased disposition blooms on his face while Napoleon and Illya continue to stand there, dumbfounded. “Now go— What in the heavens did I say about dilly dallying?”

The two of them share a look between one another before hurrying out as soon as possible, with Napoleon lagging behind just barely, and lagging further when he’s out of Waverly’s sight.

“He was right about paradise;” Napoleon grunts, wanting to do nothing but go to a masseuse and live there. “there’s still a long, _long_ way to get it.”

“Waverly, or Thoreau?” Illya shuffles him into the elevator, watching Napoleon settle on the balls of his feet as the floors tick up slower and slower.

Watching the elevator's pace, he wishes he had that scotch earlier. “When all of this is over,” Napoleon says, an air of impatience overcoming his aching body. " _you’re_ going to buy the new fish tank.”

“And I suppose it’ll come out of my pay too, and that I must hire real professional movers as well.” Illya rounds the corner of the street and figures to make Napoleon fight to bitch at him, as slightly incapacitated as he is. Trailing behind, Napoleon still keeps at it.

“You better believe that you will, if we're gonna have everything ready to move out by next Tuesday.” Napoleon watches Illya smugly open his passenger door for him like a valet and makes a neck cutting gesture with his thumb.

“Ah, it’s just like Thoreau said,” Illya waits until Napoleon's made it to leap into the driver's seat and strap himself in. Fishing out the key in a practiced swoop, he gets the vehicle roaring and bounding before Napoleon’s properly seated, Illya enjoying the curse Napoleon lets out when he grabs the armrest. “The bluebird carries the sky on his back—” he makes a hard turn and Napoleon attempts to stay put— “but the UNCLE agent cannot carry a half empty, five gallon fish tank out of the bedroom.”

Napoleon frowns deeply. “Don’t throw Thoreau back at me."

“You should really hear yourself sometimes,” unable to help himself as the light turns red, Illya gives a mocking look. “Now please, I love you — put your seatbelt on please.”

—

_The heart is forever inexperienced._

_\- Henry David Thoreau_


End file.
